Oil Spill Brings Dangers of Planned Biofuel Power Station Close to Home

Scenes of birds washing up on our beaches covered in oil is a cruel irony to us as a group who have campaigned tirelessly for 3 years to stop a biofuel power station from being built at Portland Port.

We understand that W4B Portland have begun the process of building the power station that will use vegetable oil, primarily palm oil, as their fuel. Running the power station would mean shipping 30,000+ tonnes of palm oil to Portland Port in tankers every year. We have always expressed grave concern about the deforestation, land grabbing and habitat loss that is suffered in the countries where palm oil is grown. Now we have a very real and frightening taste of what the ecological consequences of shipping oil to Portland could mean for our own beautiful, important and fragile ecosystem.

This awful tragedy should serve as an urgent wakeup call and put paid to the government’s plans of subsidising biofuel power stations (which are all to be sited at deep-water ports). We won’t stand idly by and let this dirty polluting and potentially devastating power station be built, especially when we have the opportunity to harness clean renewable energy from the elements around our coast.

For more information on how you can help stop subsidies for biofuel power stations please click here.